Life of the Mind Salon: Elijah Wald

The 2015 Fall Life of the Mind Salon Series continues on October 28 with author and musician Elijah Wald, who will speak on his new book, Dylan Goes Electric!:Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties. Dylan Goes Electric! puts that night in the cultural, political and historical context of its time, traces Dylan’s evolution as a searching and omnivorous musician, explores what Newport was and meant, and restores Pete Seeger to the central role he played in the festival and the whole concept of folk music as it was understood in that time.

Elijah Wald has a PhD in ethnomusicology and sociolinguistics and is a frequent speaker on blues, folk, pop, and Mexican music. He has been writer since the early 1980s. He has published more than a thousand articles, mostly about folk, roots and international music for various magazines and newspapers, including over ten years as “world music” writer for the Boston Globe. In the current millenium, he has been devoting most of his time to book projects, including volumes on such disparate subjects as Delta blues (Escaping the Delta), Mexican drug ballads (Narcocorrido), hitchhiking (Riding with Strangers), and a broad social history of American popular music (How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘n’ Roll). Wald is the recipant of serveral awards, including a 2002 Grammy for the liner notes to the Arhoolie Records 40th Anniversary Box, an honorable mention for the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society for Escaping the Delta, and an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for The Mayor of MacDougal Street, which inspired the Coen Brothers’ film Inside Llewyn Davis.

Wine and cheese will be served at 5:30 pm followed by the talk at 6:00 pm. Free for members; $10 for non-members. Please call the Redwood Reservation Line at 401.847.0292, ext. 112, to reserve your spot. Seating is limited.